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Nintendo Super Famicom

First written October 28, 2024

Nintendo's Super Famicom was the followup to the Family Computer and the basis for the exported Super Nintendo Entertainment System and was Nintendo's primary home video game console during the early to mid 1990s before the release of the Nintendo 64.

Super Famicom SHVC-001

The Super Famicom control deck is a curved, stylized two-tone grey case with a layout similar to the Famicom with power switch, eject lever, and reset button laid out in front of the cartridge port. A mechanical lock engages with cartridges when the power switch is turned on - this prevents the cartridge from being pulled out or ejected. This lockout was present on earlier American Super Nintendos but later it was taken out and the cartridge tooling was changed so that a cartridge could be removed from an older locking console with the lock engaged... The eject lever pushes cartridges up from the bottom. I have long heard that nobody bothered to use this lever, but my dad taught me to do it when we played his (early, locking) Super Nintendo when I was a kid and I have never seen any reason to not use it when it works just as fine if not better than yanking the cartridge out at an angle.

The top corner of the console has the four-color logo of the Super Famicom which is also represented on the controller's button layout. The rear of the console has power input (the same as the Famicom), channel switch and RF output of the RF modulator, and the multi-out A/V connector. A port on the bottom of the console under a door was used to connect to the Satellaview satellite broadcast receiver. This Super Famicom is a later "1 chip" model from the mid 1990s where many internal components had been combined and cost-reduced.

ROM cartridges in Japan were sometimes referred to as "cassettes" at this period in time - a few pre-Famicom cartridge consoles referred to their games as cassettes. This is funny to hear alongside stories of Americans calling Atari or Nintendo games "tapes" as VCRs were the closest point of reference for the plastic slabs as well as the idea of cartridge versus cassette as terms for audio tape carriers in the 1970s. A few more of my Super Famicom games can be seen here.

Unlike the Famicom (and like most other consoles), the Super Famicom has detachable controllers. There are two ports in the front. Controller cords are relatively short - like the Famicom it was assumed that players would have the console sitting near them and in front of the television. The controller cords for the export versions were longer.

The color-coded buttons were changed to a two-tone purple for the American Super Nintendo and the X and Y buttons were also changed to be concave, which I think was a nice change that helps naturally locate the thumb across two of the face buttons at once, making it easy to hold down Y to run with the pad of your thumb and rock down to tap B to jump. The Super Famicom controller is really just about the ideal controller in my mind, I love the sensible layout and abundance of buttons without feeling overwhelming.